


Discorporation

by D20Owlbear



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Also Rated M for violence, Angst, Angstier Angst, But not the Angstiest Angst, But they're back by the next chapter, Discorporation not true death, Each chapter is a new death, Every day a little death for every day I die, Individual CWs in each chapter summary, Lots of Mentions of Historical Happenstance, Lots of Wars, M/M, No one said they DIDN'T die so here we are, Occasional Mentions of Historical Figures, Occasionally both of them perish, Other, Rated M for sometimes Mercy kills, Various canon technically compliant, Vignettes, not chronological
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23795530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale have been on the Earth for millennia, six of them to be precise. Through all the trials and tribulations that humankind has concocted, and borne witness to the myriad of horrors and wars they've started.These are some of the stories of how they discorporated. Sometimes at each other's hands, sometimes for mercy, and sometimes simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 98
Kudos: 83





	1. 1098CE — Ma'arrat al-Numan, Syria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Implied, historical canibalism

Crowley knelt amongst the remains of men in a barren fig tree in the center of Ma'arrat al-Numan. His hands were smeared in blood, just as his lips and face were, and he vowed to himself that he would never eat again, no matter how tempting it might be. He didn’t deserve this haunting taste out of his mouth, the bitter ghosts of flesh-warm copper blood and the bile-flavor of disgust and the acrid mouth-scent of self-recrimination.

His hands laid limply in his lap and after every exhale of godforsaken air from his lungs he gasped to fill them back up in an endless loop of detestable _living._ He was a demon, sure, his armor of impiety, scattered, in pieces around him, but he was one who lived up here. All the demons in hell, with their screaming and gnashing of teeth and tortured souls who kept far away from the Earth’s surface only knew the suffering of the masses and grew apathetic towards it. But Crowley, how could he?

Crowley tasted the scents of life and laughter and his heart grew soft and vulnerable in turns to these poor creatures kept wrapped up in their humanity. Perhaps that was why he love– tolerated children so easily. They had nothing but their humanity, distilled down to the barest of essences and condensed into something small and pure before it diluted over time with growth and accursed _knowledge_. 

Sometimes... he regretted. Deeply.

The scent of ozone wafted to him, overwhelming all other tastes in his mouth, replacing them with the spice of the calm after a storm and the perfume of fragrant, flammable oils. 

“Aziraphale.” Crowley whispered to himself, but didn’t move. Even as he heard the too-loud ring of a sword being drawn from its sheath in a swift, practiced movement. He shifted his weight to brace himself and coughed at the sudden pain lancing through his chest.

“Angel?” Crowley choked on the blood filling his lungs. The massive sword missed his heart, that would have been much faster. He can’t even blame Aziraphale, he moved at the last second, shifted in his spot. This had been meant to be something quick and clean. 

"Crowley, I’m sorry.“ The voice trembled behind him, horrified perhaps at causing such a prolonged end, and a soft hand lay gently on the back of his head. If it took discorporating to get this affection, he’d do it a million times over. It was worth it. 

"I know. ’S ok. Glad yer ok.” He mumbled back, not turning his head, not wanting to reveal how much the hand in his hair affected him. 

“I’ll see you soon?” Aziraphale asked softly. Crowley scoffed and then coughed. Fuck that hurt, the blade scraped along his ribs every time he breathed ineffectually. Corporations were odd, normally he didn’t need to breathe because he forgot about it, but now that he’s hurt it was all he could think about. The difficulty of knowing something was meant to hurt you, and would, made it nigh impossible to get out of discorporating in situations like this. 

"‘F course, angel. ’T’s the Crusades. They want me up here ’s much as I don’ wanna be down. An' ya still owe me that mead.“ 

"Crowley!” Aziraphale’s voice was still soft, but he took on an affectation of disdain, even though his hand never moved except to card his fingers through Crowley’s hair. Ha, he knew Aziraphale liked it long, the sentimental bastard. “That was from centuries ago!" 

"And yet…” Crowley muttered, leaning his forehead against the tree. The sword that speared through him had bitten into the flesh of the fig tree. He didn’t say it, didn’t have to, not anymore. Suddenly he thought he understood why Yeshua had cursed the figs by Jerusalem, fuck the holy land. Fuck everyone who wanted to keep it or take charge of it for the stained and tainted name of Jesus Christ, who had only ever wanted people to be kind to one another enough to die for it. The hypocrisy tasted like lye on his tongue, burning and damning in ways he didn’t want to think about.

Aziraphale stayed with him until he knew no more of a kind hand in his hair and rough bark on his forehead, or the armor heavy and useless on his body.

Aziraphale had stayed, never drifting into Crowley’s sight, making no move to unveil his eyes or to peer into his soul through them, and for that Crowley could only be silently thankful. He hated to think what the angel might have seen, what sorts of broken edges there were there that might cut him like glass shards. 

"Alright, coach, put me back in!“ Crowley grinned viciously, coalescing into an amalgamation of his true form, dripping with black ooze of a freshly discorporated demon that stank like peaty mud. He covered every vulnerable thing in him that wasn’t built to be here with it, every part of him that might seem like a target until it was unappetizing and not worth the effort to bite into, raring to be out of Hell already.

Crowley was a thing of Hell, even if he hated it, even if he desperately stayed away, and so he knew how it worked. If he was too small to be interesting, too dirty or disgusting in ways even demons didn’t like, then he’d be safe. And if he was back in the game Up Top, then he’d be too busy to care about the rest stuck Down Below.


	2. 1348CE Dode, Kent, England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Black Death/Plague

“I couldn’t sleep anyway,” Crowley assured, mopping up some of the sweat off Aziraphale’s brow with a tired sigh and no false cheer to be found for miles. Aziraphale was sweating with fever and chilled to the bone, wracked with pain. 

Aziraphale smiled, too brightly for how his body shook with mortal ailment. It was one thing to know well enough that your body was immortal if you wished it, if you believed in it, to know that you couldn’t be infected because you were above such things or immune to them. It was something else entirely to actually believe it enough to keep any creeping doubts from slinking in through whatever chinks in the armor there might be.

Creeping doubt that climbs walls like ivy and erodes them with nefarious roots was the true enemy of all those of celestial origin. There are certain things to be said for blind belief, and those things were all of the good sorts, if you asked the Angels (and the bad sort, if you asked Demons). All except for the Angel and Demon who were closest to humanity, who had seen truly what blind belief had wrought. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale asked after some time. “Crowley, you can’t catch this.” And, if not for the utter lack of telltale ozone-burn that came from blessing a demon, Crowley might have thought it was a divine sacrament with how Aziraphale breathed his commandment.

The tremble in his voice was almost enough to let Crowley hope about things, things that didn’t matter at all right now, and especially not when Aziraphale was in so much misery. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t  _ just _ that angels—that Aziraphale!—could succumb to something this grotesque. It made Crowley rail and rave at God in his head, silent prayers of utter fury at Her for letting Her creations suffer like this. Just as She always had.

“I won’t.” It wouldn’t dare to infect Crowley, not if it knew what was good for it. Demons might catch illnesses, but Crowley knew from experience that, no matter how he might suffer for it, it wouldn’t kill him. The hellfire in his singed soul that piloted the corporation made sure of that. Of course, it was one of those blindly held beliefs he had, no chinks in that armor. If he was made to suffer for it, then it all made sense to Crowley (as well as most other Demons, who also tended to think of existence as suffering, and doing unto others as had been done unto you).

“Good, good.” Aziraphale grimaced and held Crowley’s hand weakly before he twisted in the bed to vomit over the side. Crowley didn’t have to taste the air to know it was blood rather than bile. He shouldn’t have any of these symptoms, he was an Angel. Crowley had despaired for the last three days, ever since Aziraphale first mentioned with growing horror that he’d seen the first  _ gavocciolo _ underneath his arm. It wasn’t a pleasant death, and Crowley knew the request that was coming.

“I don’t think I could last another four days of this, my dear boy,” Aziraphale murmured, voice raw and hoarse from cries of pain and acid destroying his throat. Crowley’s sense of dread was quite good, or bad he supposed, depending on how you look at it. If he dreaded for no reason, if his terror at a thing was high, then surely something would come to pass that would account for it. Each and every time that his dread sent his nerves rocketing to new heights, something terrible would come to pass. 

At first, he thought it might have been this Black Death, but it hadn’t abated even with Aziraphale having caught it, even while he tried his best to tend to the angel in his sickness it ratcheted up until the dread filled every part of him and was nigh on unbearable. And now, at the climax of it, Crowley knew that this was what he had been waiting for with apprehension. 

“Angel…” Crowley murmured, unable to keep the strain out of his throat as he spoke.

“Crowley, please, anything,” Aziraphale pleaded, eyes bright with tears and hope, “Please send me back to get a new corporation. I cannot stand this hell any longer.” Bastard.

Crowley, as always, hid his eyes and did as his angel bid, even if his heart scarred over once more. 

Aziraphale wouldn’t be back for the rest of the 14th century, just in case. Wouldn’t want to let their mean, lean, Earthly Agent get sick again like this! And besides, souls were coming in left and right, they were in the black, no worries, buddy! Take a rest in the archives, Sabriel wanted to go over your miracles with you since you’re back now so your millennial audit isn’t so long for Raqib and Atid! Great initiative, that Sabriel! 

Crowley, for his part, lay in the same bed for the next seven days, wracked with misery and silent in his woe, until all the signs and symptoms of his own plague-catching subsided. There were a small number of people who had caught the Death and then evaded it, even if it was nearly Hell in the making, Crowley hadn’t had any special resistances to it, and especially not after he saw it lay low an angel who ought to have been far more competent at this whole not-getting-ill thing. 

And then, on the seventh day, he got up and did as Hell bid him do. Just as he always did. 


	3. 1749CE England, Ranelagh Gardens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Poisoning, willingly drinking poison

The strains of a lively waltz played in the rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens and there were few people left along the edges of the extravagant building. More were at the ‘house’ on the water with pointed and arched roofing reminiscent of certain Chinese stylings. Crowley laughed charmingly at whatever her companion had said, her eyes were hidden by the mask that suggested an elegant air of mystery about her as well as something dangerous, which seemed to be a draw for the men surrounding her rather than something to be wary of.

Aziraphale breathed in deliberately and took a moment to take in the scene. Her dress was ostentatious, of course, dripping with gold and rubies that looked like blood droplets and trimmed with beautiful black lace over a red velvet robe with gathering that denoted the sort of mastery that Aziraphale preferred in his tailors. Her mask was just as over the top, rubies bleeding from the eye holes that were veiled over by black fabric giving her the look of a dazzling skeleton, and only her nose showed through on the upper half of her face, through the hole in the mask there.

She was surrounded by a group of men, all who seemed to be growing more and more agitated with each other as she spoke, vying for her attentions. With a faux-put upon sigh, Aziraphale repositioned his own mask, something white and feathered and with a few hidden pearls with gold chains draped from it, before striding over.

“My dear!” Aziraphale greeted happily, breaking through the group to take Crowley’s arm, and she smiled up at him with a touch of aggression that made his heart skip a beat. She would be upset, of course, that he'd ruined her fun but Aziraphale liked to think that, perhaps, his company might offset the loss of... revenue, as it were.

“Wicked thing,” he tutted at her, and smoothly nodded at the gentlemen around her, pleased she let herself be carted off. For the sake of the other men, of course. Only an angel could save humans from a demon’s direct wiles. It was his duty, to be sure.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, angel,” Crowley said lightly as they made their way into the gardens, where few people could be seen. There was something in her voice that made Aziraphale pause before replying.

“Yes, nearly four decades now isn’t it, my dear?” He hummed and patted her hand, “Not quite so long as it might have been, I hadn’t known you were here. Though I should have suspected a masquerade like this would be your doing.”

“Not my doing, not in the sslightesst.” Crowley hissed, though she sounded tired more than upset, or perhaps the sort of upset people got when they hadn’t slept in some time.

“Are you alright, dear?” Aziraphale stopped them and turned to face her, removing her hand from his elbow, and instead taking both of hers between his. “I apologize about last time, are you still cross about–”

“Yesss I’m ssstill crosss about the  _ Honourable _ Eassst India Company!” Crowley hissed loudly, baring fangs she surely manifested for this purpose alone, “And in any case, it’s more that Head Office is upset about it." Crowley forcibly calmed herself so she no longer hissed, though Aziraphale could feel her glare through the veiled eyes of the mask. If he looked closely enough, he could nearly see her golden eyes glowing underneath.

“My dear,” Aziraphale said mournfully, “I  _ am _ so sorry. I had no choice, you know, it was direct orders. Something about colonizing to spread Christianity, or resulting in it.” He sighed heavily and grimaced. Those sorts of orders always sat poorly with him, time and time again it was simply people being bullied into believing something new they didn’t much care for in the first place and it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Yeah, well, it’s your turn, angel.” Crowley murmured and then whisked two glasses of wine into her hands from the private table in the rotunda with a snap. The expensive stuff. She handed one over solemnly to Aziraphale, who took it with an inquisitive hum and raised eyebrow.

She looked him in the eyes and tipped the contents of a poisoner’s ring into his glass before shutting it once more with a soft click that echoed impossibly in the empty gardens.

“Oh. Right then. I suppose you’re right, it is my turn, isn’t it?” Aziraphale sighed heavily and grasped for her hand. “You’ll stay?”

“Always.” Crowley murmured, looking away for a moment and then threaded her fingers through his, squeezing his hand with a regretful frown on her face. Her lips were as delicate and as red as the wine in his glass, even darkened by poison as it was.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured, voice low as if she was worried about being caught, “It’s my venom. It’s fast and tasteless, you’ll barely feel it this time. ‘S the least I could do.”

“Ta, then.” Aziraphale smiled and toasted her with his glass in the air, and drained his drink at the same time Crowley did. Ah, yes, it was fast-acting, wasn’t it? He could already feel the turn of his corporeal stomach, a demon’s poison quickly invading the rest of him and he stumbled into her arms in response to the overwhelming numbness it caused.

“Oh, that’s not so bad.” He muttered, blinking in disorientation. When had she set him down on the ground, propped up against a tree? And when had Crowley knelt beside him? Bugger, he’d lose most of this time wouldn’t he? These stolen moments of intimacy they only ever seemed to be allowed when one of them was dying, or about to.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t be, angel.” Crowley didn’t have to say it, but he knew. She’d concocted the poison just for him, and if that wasn’t the closest he’d get to an admission of the love he felt from her every time they were near, then Aziraphale would eat his hat. Not really, of course,  _ that  _ phrase hadn’t come into use yet, but the idea was the same. If this was all they had, the moments between life and death and discorporation to be kind and sweet to each other, then so be it.

This was the safest they could be together, Aziraphale knew, and his breathing grew heavier and rough as he felt Crowley lean against him, wrap his arm around her waist as if they could be lovers like anyone else at this masquerade instead of hereditary enemies. Greatest Adversaries. (And if _Greatest Adversaries_ had started to sound like _My Most Beloved_ more and more as the years went by, then so be it.)

Crowley said something Aziraphale didn’t quite catch, too involved in feeling her body against his failing one to hear her. But she only shook his head and kissed his shoulder.

It felt like love, and an apology, and something of a necessary evil.

But most of all, it left a perfect red stain on his white coat, hidden between frills, that if Aziraphale were more romantic and less aware of every part of his corporeal body, might call over his heart. (He’d call it that anyway, it made him feel better, to know she cared just as much as he did, no matter that they very carefully never spoke of it.)


	4. 630CE Utrecht, Netherlands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: collapsing building, Crowley in holy spaces

“Crowley.” Aziraphale frowned in worry as he caught sight of Crowley flying like a bat out of hell, his wings half-out into reality and propelling him forward. 

“Angel!” Crowley shouted, taking a running leap into St. Martin's Cathedral and yelping with every step on consecrated ground, he stumbled as his wings suddenly were forced back into that occult space they occupied as soon as he passed through the doors. “We gotta go, _now!”_

Aziraphale’s brows were drawn together as he stepped forward from the clocktower to meet Crowley halfway, well into the apse and he tutted at Crowley’s jumping from foot to foot and rocking from toe to heel to relieve any burning he might manage. Perhaps it wasn’t unlike being on the beach without shoes, but anyone native to a coast near the equator knew if it was stood on long enough and the sun was hot enough, the burns could be quite real and painful indeed.

“Cra–owley, just _what_ are you doing here?” Aziraphale pursed his lips at the hopping demon who scowled right back. Short of picking up his _hereditary enemy,_ Aziraphale couldn’t see any way to assist, so he politely kept quiet about the obvious discomfort Crowley was in.

“Saving you, angel!” Crowley threw his hands up in the air and growled a frustrated sound before pivoting on a heel and lunging for Aziraphale’s hand with all the grace and swiftness of a striking serpent. 

“Saving me, you serpent?” Aziraphale demanded, placing his hands on his hips, arms akimbo, pulling his hands deftly out of Crowley's easy reach. “For Heaven’s sake—just what do you mean by that?” It was clear Aziraphale very much didn’t believe Crowley, the way he looked at him couldn’t be more obvious and Crowley scowled harder until the tips of his braids smoldered from the attempts at using demonic power in a holy space.

“Are you trying to _Tempt_ me?” Aziraphale drew himself up to his full height and pulled back his shoulders, though he hadn’t expected Crowley to cringe in on himself at the gesture, far more used to the demon being ready to (mock) fight back and give as good as he got.

“No, angel! Well–” Crowley kept rocking back and forth on his feet, slower and losing any connection to the nerves in his corporation’s soles as they blistered and bled through his pseudo-shoes. Aziraphale grimaced at the thought of having to clean off demon blood from the stones. A loud, bone-creaking _thud_ sounded after a temporary roll of thunder, and Crowley grew pale in the face.

“Angel, let's go! They’re here!” Crowley scrambled to grab at Aziraphale’s hands again to pull him out, and the angel allowed it but did not move from his place in the apse. 

“Good _lord,_ Crowley, really. Who is here?” Aziraphale demanded and stepped back to the windows to take a look at what had just happened to shake the cathedral. Aziraphale stopped short as soon as he caught sight of Friesians in armor with a battering ram on wheels. State of the art technology, truly, but Aziraphale felt his corporation’s blood run cold in a truly worrying moment. 

“Oh. _Them_.” His voice felt far away before he was slammed back into the plane of reality currently inhabited by his mortal coil with a hiss as Crowley dug his taloned fingers into the backs of his hands. Absently, he noticed Crowley no longer shifted his weight on his feet and he half-dragged them like deadened stumps. His claws sparked with holy fire attempting to catch him alight and burning black up his fingers, the holy place attempting to banish the demon from within it even now.

“The books!” Aziraphale’s face lit up in horror and shock. He flung himself from Crowley’s surprisingly weak grasp and heard loud footfalls run after him, slowly, much too slowly for Crowley’s usual speed. 

_Thud. The rolling thunder of wooden wheels backing up. Pause. Thunder gaining forward speed. Thud._

Aziraphale frantically pulled a leather bag from the—he hated using miracles to make things he could just as easily purchase, lovingly made, from a human—but desperate times called for desperate measures.

_Pause. Thunder. Thud._

The thunder became a constant background noise as Crowley grabbed at the back of Aziraphale’s doublet, trying to pull him away and getting absolutely nowhere with it. Aziraphale brushed off every increasingly desperate attempt with little more than a shrug of his shoulder and a sturdy shift of his weight that reminded Crowley that he most certainly _was_ still made to fight. He paid no mind to how Crowley’s fingers grew blacker and bonier and how his grip grew weaker even as his attempts became more frantic. His full attention was on the books he fluttered between, knowing he could only take so many in the bag, and deciding on those most valuable.

“Forget the books, for Hell’s sake, angel!” Crowley cried, voice wet and terrified. “We have to leave, you– you great big _pigeon_!”

_Thunder._

_Thud._

_Thunder._

And the walls fell like Jericho had, all at once and with a great cry from without. Crowley thought it felt exactly the same, being in the crumbling walls. Aziraphale wondered if it were accurate.

The walls came crumpling down like a castle made of sand rather than stone, and neither of them knew what had happened before they woke at their celestial, or occult, desks in their home offices with paperwork neatly stacked in their inboxes. 

_Bugger_.


	5. 1221CE just outside Cairo, Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Fight, violence, kiss to a newly dead body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this was a day later than I normally post! I accidentally zoned out for literally the entirety of yesterday! Notes at end about the language and words they use.

“Amabo te, angel, obsecro, possum tibi osculum?”* Crowley asked lowly, his helmet off and tossed to the sand, and he reached up to cup the side of Aziraphale’s face. His eyes were on display, the yellow shining under pale moonlight and his pupils reflecting the light like the nocturnal creature he was.

Aziraphale couldn’t answer, not yet, the question had so many layers to it how could he? The request was formal, stunningly so from a creature like Crowley, Aziraphale thought. It was the sort of thing you asked someone of a higher station, to kiss them in greeting. Or reverence. His eyes grew wet and his chest felt caved in and, if he were any worse of an angel than he already was, he might have started to curse aloud at their situation.

It all seemed just so… hopeless.

They’re on opposite sides of the crusades, which truly wasn’t so astonishing. It wasn’t so surprising which opposite sides they were on, either. It was, however, a bit shocking to find each other over and over again on the battlefield. This is the fifth crusade they’ve both been sent on and they’re in the dying heat of an Egyptian night once more. The air between them felt dead and old, but not stale, and was unknowably familiar.

It feels like the night before the final plague. 

“Please don’t.” Aziraphale whispered, voice wavering as tears ran down his face. Above all else, he looked  _ tired _ . Worn in by overuse and made to act against his nature by those who ought to know better, Crowley thinks to himself.

Crowley sighed and ran the leather-gauntleted hand over his face. He turned to the side, looked up to the sky, and traced all the stars in the Milky Way with longing fingers, wishing they were up there instead of down here. He always seemed to wish that these days. If wishes were horses even beggars would ride, though. It’s likely for the best, Crowley can’t stand horses.

There was a long silence that stretched between the two of them, their swords drawn but held with their points down and loose by their sides. They didn’t  _ want _ to clash, all they did these days seemed to be warring and battling. For the last 200  _ bloody _ years, nearly nonstop with these ghastly Crusades for the so-called Holy Lands. Crowley was done, he was tired, as tired as Aziraphale looked, it seemed like he was always tired these days. It was harder and harder to act like everything was fine and all “going according to plan, Crowley.”

“Do you want to fight?” Crowley asked at last.  _ Are you going to make me fight you? _ The true question lingered unsaid, but understood.

“It’s in our natures, my dear.” Aziraphale replied softly, hating the words as they entered the world, and hating himself for his part in how Crowley’s shoulders slumped at the  _ Yes, we must. _

“Ah.” Crowley said.  _ So be it. _

The air between them felt deader and deader until it seemed like nothing at all could ever exist between them, the chasms gaping wide and the endless void they court by fraternizing with each other biting at their feet. Slowly, Crowley drew his blade up and leveled the point at Aziraphale, making no move to recover his helmet in the sand. They’ve discorporated each other more or less in turns every Crusade since the first and, if they truly played by any rules of fairness, it would be Crowley’s turn to be sent back to his Head Offices looking for a new body to inhabit.

They fought in the sands by the Nile, constantly shifting under their feet and being kicked up in half-hearted dirty moves from the both of them. Neither of them were anything other than tired. Tired to the bone, weary in their souls, if they had them. 

Just, what was the point anymore? There’d be more wars, they’d have to fight like this over and over again, and they’d discorporate in turns and there’d be paperwork and the wheel would turn endlessly on as they dashed themselves against it in some useless attempt to keep things as they were. The Arrangement did nothing for this, not when they were both checked up on far more than normal during these horrific holy wars, changing sides as the Offices saw fit.

There was no  _ Right  _ or  _ Wrong _ , no  _ Good _ or  _ Evil _ to be found like this. There was just war, and death, and everything that got left behind to mourn them. And, unfortunately, it was the best they could hope for. Sometimes like this, Crowley wondered if the fruit of the Tree had only worked on Adam and Eve, and if the Knowledge of Good and Evil had somehow escaped out of humanity after that very first generation.

Their swords rang as they parried and blocked and struck at each other, moving slowly as if it were a dance. Perhaps it was, the only sort of dance they might be locked in. One that was meant to last forever. Opposite sides clashing until one was too damaged to go on, until the both of them wore themselves down into nothing at all. Maybe then, when they were nothing, they’d be allowed to rest.

Their crossguards locked and they leaned in so close they might as well have nothing between them, only their breaths mingled and they paused. Crowley and Aziraphale leaned in as one, entranced by the brightness of the stars and the hypnotic steps of their entanglement.

And then, Crowley pushed. While normally he wouldn’t have the upper hand over Aziraphale in a martial duel of nearly any kind, he’d regained his thoughts a bit faster than the angel had this time, allowing him to surprise Aziraphale.

Aziraphale fell, landing on his back and too slow to get up in his heavy armor. Crowley had always been the quicker of the two anyway, and in lighter leathers and chain besides, and without thinking about it he lunged forward and swung down to best use the weight of his sword and the force behind it to crush in the metal of Aziraphale’s breastplate.

It was a habit, by this point, to make sure fallen opponents wouldn’t get up.

It was just as devastating as it always was, knowing he’d killed Aziraphale in any way. 

Realizing what he’d done, Crowley flung his sword aside and fell to his knees, crawling up to lift Aziraphale’s head onto his lap.

“I’m sorry.” He said, whispering. Aziraphale huffed weakly in response.

“Was your turn, you devil.” The angel replied wetly, blood filling his lungs and air filling his chest in all the wrong ways as he slowly drowned. 

“I’m sorry.” Crowley repeated with a dry sob, voice cracking.

“It’s alright, we knew it would come to this.” Aziraphale said slowly, every word an effort and he groaned loudly at the hacking cough that wracked his body. “Crowley, please.” He croaked. Death was different for them, it wasn’t really an end or even the end of their time on earth. They’d be reincorporated quickly, especially in tumultuous times like these. Even knowing that, there was always an unignorable pang in Crowley’s heart whenever he had to hurt Aziraphale like this, like he was asking for. Even if it was to save him some minutes of agony.

“Of course, angel.” Crowley pulled a sharp little knife from his boot, most useful for things like cutting rope or perhaps filleting a fish, or even cutting up an apple, but it would do and he had no desire to leave his spot to let Aziraphale’s head fall back into the sand to take his sword in hand again.

“Me basia sis?”* Aziraphale asked softly, gently, like he wasn’t aware of all the things he was asking. Crowley let out a shuddering breath, wet with grief. Like he wasn’t being asked by the only higher power he deemed worthy of the title to come to the same level, to meet him and to kiss him in the way lovers kissed rather than the way subjects of a king did.

“Best not, angel.” Crowley whispered mournfully, barely louder than the susurrus noise of a serpent slithering across desert sand. He hated the way guilt and regret sat on his tongue, tasting of bile and impossible to be rid of from the back of his throat, stuck there like phlegm.

Without another word Aziraphale left his corporeal form with the help of Crowley’s bloody boot knife. Only once he was sure Aziraphale had departed from it fully, when the body was cold and lifeless, he kissed Aziraphale’s lips for only the briefest second and closed the angel’s unseeing eyes.

“Best not.” Crowley repeated, though there was no one else to understand that he truly meant  _ I wish desperately we could _ . So, he stood and gathered his sword and helmet and passed once more across the Nile to speak with those who would report his  _ success _ to al-Kamil. His success at ensuring that the European Crusaders would remain ignorant of the implications of the time of year and their proximity to the largest river in the known world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * In essence, Crowley is using extremely formal terms that are relatively female-coded with “Amabo te, angel, obsecro, possum tibi osculum”. More or less literally translated it should be “Please, angel (as a title), I implore you, kiss me.” It’s clear that Crowley is requesting a kiss to the cheek or the hand here as a way to cede their meeting to Aziraphale and denoting himself as lower in status than him due to his word choice.
> 
> Aziraphale, on the other hand, was speaking in a much less formal sense when he said “Me basia sis”, which translates to “kiss me, if you want” in question form. It’s spoken with the verbiage used by those higher in station to those lower but he uses a different verb for “to kiss,” being a middle ground between ‘osculari’ and ‘saviari’ (which was an erotic kiss that would be seen in places like a brothel and absolutely not fit for public), which came much later and was often used to denote a romantic type of kiss.


	6. 856CE Corinth, Byzantine Rome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Earthquake, mercy kill/death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo dudes, i am... so sorry. I don't know what's going on with time but I straight up thought that this was last week and didn't realize I missed a posting date until this morning. So anyway, have a Corinthian Earthquake that actually did happen and was _real bad_.

The ground trembled and Crowley’s stomach dropped into the Deepest Pit. He’d been feeling  _ off _ for some time, a few days, but this entire forsaken city made him feel that way without fail. The tectonic plates shifted quickly here, so quickly he could practically feel it through his sandals. 

In a fit of panic, he shucked off his shoes in the middle of the street, and nearly fell to his knees in terror. These sorts of things didn’t matter to him, Crowley was a creature of Hell and he was made of sterner stuff than roads and things that had come from the Earth that he had so easily burrowed through to get to the surface. But Aziraphale was here too, he’d never been antsy about the earth shifting beneath his feet so quickly he could feel it if he stood still long enough, and he was a creature of light and clouds and heaven and wide, open spaces.

He didn’t bother to pick his shoes up again or do anything to modify the memories of the humans who saw him half-manifest his wings to propel him through the streets. A broken bottle of wine lay where Crowley had dropped it, the red liquid seeping between the cobblestone cracks and vibrating where it settled like an eerie heartbeat.

He ran with his wings behind him, sprinting faster than anything unaided could ever hope to, taking corners at sharp turns and thinking of anything that got in his way as a hindrance that might slow him down. Not for the first time he blessed aloud about Aziraphale’s habit of settling in the tightest packed quarters. Aziraphale always said that he enjoyed the thrum of energy humans had inherent in them.

He crossed one of the most populous, densely packed cities he’s seen since the fall of Gomorrah and couldn’t think past the blinding terror of knowing every face he saw, right now in this seemingly endless sprint to Aziraphale’s home in Corinth. None of them would be here tomorrow, not as they were, and he hoped and perhaps even prayed he’d never see them again if only for his own peace of mind.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, his voice amplified with magics woven unconsciously into the air in his panic, “Aziraphale!”

Crowley flew up the stairs to Aziraphale’s second-story apartment and knocked over a few piles of books and a jug of wine. It shattered on the stone floors and the deep red of it pulsed erratically with a thousand little vibrations. 

“Aziraphale, we have to go.” He shouted again, no less worried than before but quieter and more stern.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale huffed and frowned, “Just what do you think you’re doing here, demon?” There was a bite to his words that surely came from mussing his books, but Crowley couldn’t bring himself to care, just about vibrating out of his skin or clawing it off in this ceaseless, unrelenting anxiety that drove him to pace and scratch at his body until he left great welts that sluggishly dripped blood.

“Crow– Crowley stop it!” Aziraphale shouted and gathered Crowley’s hands in his own to keep him from harming himself, and Crowley could feel the worry pour off Aziraphale at how much of a skittish animal the demon was sure he resembled, trembling violently with no white to be seen in his eyes at all anymore. “And, and where are your  _ shoes _ , Crowley?!”

“Don’t need ‘em,” Crowley gripped back at Aziraphale’s hands and his fingernails-turned-claws dug into the backs of perfect scholar’s hands as he slowly lost more and more of his grip on his human-like form. He pulled at Aziraphale flapping his wings in order to pull with just a bit more strength and leverage than Aziraphale could counter before a quake hit.

“Oh no.” Crowley whispered, his stomach broke through the bottom of the Deepest Pit and descended further into hereto untold depths of Hell. It was here, he was far too late, and he’d never felt it so keenly as now. It was the cathedral all over again, they’d discorporate here under piles of rubble.

All at once, he came back to himself, Aziraphale had his hands on Crowley’s shoulders, gripping tightly at him and shaking him some to bring him back to the rest of the world. “-ley? Crowley!” Aziraphale said, voice modulated with stern worry when he saw Crowley’s shoulders bend like the lintel breaking and he went unnaturally still.

“Too late, angel.” Crowley muttered hoarsely, and sent Aziraphale a pleading look that begged for quite a lot of things, but mostly forgiveness. He didn’t want to be forgiven by anyone else, he was unforgivable, came with the job description really, but in the too-still seconds before the walls swayed he thought he might like to be forgiven for his sandals.

Then the walls fell, just like Jericho, except this time they were inside them. Air rushed past Crowley’s ears as they tumbled to the ground that churned and convulsed until great slabs of road and stone rose up and disturbed the city and its people

There was screaming, and crying, and Crowley had never felt so much like he was in Hell on Earth. He’d been torn away from Aziraphale as they fell. Debris and the stone and wood and plaster of the walls around them and the housing above them crushed them in, and Crowley’s body was sore beyond belief. Stones landed on him in ways that would kill a human, but the Earth could never truly harm a demon, not like this, not when there was pain and suffering to be had elsewhere. But it could disorient him.

His head pounded and his eyes couldn’t focus and he felt the vibrations of the Earth in his  _ bones _ now as he lay coffined in its clutches for some long minutes. And then he remembered.

“Aziraphale!” He croaked loudly, voice cracking from the dust lining his useless human lungs. 

“Crowley?” He heard from only a few feet away, and he shifted broken, carved stones and the fractured skeleton of the home that lay on top of them until he could wriggle his sorry hide to Aziraphale’s location. 

Nearly crying from relief, Crowley carefully took Aziraphale’s hand and murmured “I thought I lost you,” as if it were a prayer.

Aziraphale turned his head to look over at Crowley and once more his stomach sank, though this time his heart joined it.  _ Oh no _ , no. No no  _ nononono _ . Crowley keened a miserable sound from the back of his throat that turned into nothing but air by the time it left his lips. 

"I'm afraid you're going to, my dear." Aziraphale chuckled wetly and reached up with a bloodied hand to wipe a tear off Crowley’s face. He only succeeded in leaving a red smear along his cheekbone. Aziraphale coughed and more blood spattered his lips, and Crowley pointedly could not look where a damned, bloody rock had crushed his angel from the lower half of the ribs and down, leaving his head and one of his arms free. 

_ Just enough to suffer _ , Crowley  thought, and he was just an unfortunate enough of a demon to be morose about it . If he wasn’t already in shock, then he would be soon. But Crowley knew quite well that shock didn’t always dull the pain the way it ought.

“Just for a bit.” Aziraphale assured him, as if  _ he  _ were the one deserving comfort.

“Angel,” Crowley wheezed, the air laden with dust that dried him from the inside out. “I’m so–” he cut himself off. Demons didn’t say sorry. Demons weren’t forgivable.

“I know, dear.” Aziraphale murmured, “No act of God, I should think, would be your fault.” He breathed in deeply and Crowley heard the air in his lungs whistle as they didn’t fill from the perforations. He made a choice that would haunt him. Just as all his other choices did. 

Gently cupping Aziraphale’s head, supporting the weight of it entirely, Crowley bent down as best he could to press an awkward kiss on Aziraphale’s brow, forcing him to close his eyes. With an unspoken regret, Crowley sharply twisted his hands with a loud  _ crack _ and felt Aziraphale’s now-uninhabited body fall limp between his fingers.

He did not like how Aziraphale’s hair felt under his fingers covered in bloody, muddy dirt.


	7. 538CE Wessex, British Isles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Aziraphale stabs a female-presenting Crowley while she's powerless

“You ride with Arthur then?” A low, subdued voice asked from behind Aziraphale, who turned on his heel, hand on his sword hilt. A woman was there, with a particularly familiar voice. She wore a veil that hid her hair from him, but her dress was black velvet with burgundy stitching around the hem, decorated with subtle scenes of serpents and hares. He had no doubt her hair matched the color of the embroidery underneath the veil.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale whispered sharply, frowning loudly and dropping his hand from his sword. “Just what do you think you’re doing here? I _told_ you, I won’t be helping you– helping _foment_ your chaos!”

“None of that, angel.” Crowley scoffed with a frown that Aziraphale could only barely make out. She stepped into a shaft of light from the tall, thin window and Aziraphale’s breath caught. Her eyes were bare and piercingly golden, though she had forced her pupils round, and wisps of her hair curled seductively from underneath her head covering. The fabric of it was thin and nearly transparent except for its dark color and her wine-red hair could be seen through it if one stood transfixed long enough.

Aziraphale quickly pushed the observation from his mind and narrowed his eyes at her. “And if that’s not why you’re here, then why are you?”

“Morgein!” King Arthur called solemnly from down the hall, having caught sight of them in passing. Her back was to him and her eyes remained on Aziraphale as she smiled. It felt like a sword in his chest for some reason he didn’t care to examine.

“Yes, Great King?” Crowley said back after some moments of silence, waiting patiently for the King to come to _her_. Aziraphale huffed at the indignity of it, and eyed King Arthur dubiously.

“There is supper to be had, and it would delight me if you were to join us.” Arthur said, offering her his arm. “And perhaps we may speak then of why you have come.”

Crowley looked up at Arthur, who was only just barely taller than her, “My heart may never cease to rejoice when I hear such pretty words from you, Great King.” And then she turned her golden gaze onto Aziraphale pointedly.

“And which knight is this?” She asked Arthur, placing her hand on his elbow without bothering to look, obviously familiar with this charade of hers. “I have not seen him before now.” Arthur laughed in reply and proceeded to guide Crowley away, presumably for her to pretend to eat and break bread like she wasn’t a demon in his castle, and regaled her with the tale of Sir Azira Phail and how he’d saved Arthur and his lot from a dastardly beast in the woods only a few months ago.

Aziraphale, of course, followed.

Over the course of the next fortnight, Crowley was everywhere. Each time Aziraphale attempted a miracle to aid who he could, Crowley was there doing something nefarious. Aziraphale was forced onto his toes at all times, he could not sleep—not that he had before, but he had no time to read at night as he liked anymore—he could not eat, nor could he take any leisure time to himself with her presence around the castle. She was constantly fomenting her evil mischiefs and damning the days of those around her, under the guise of being witty and well-liked by those in court.

She inspired envy and lust alike, Aziraphale was sure. And by the end of two weeks, she seemed no longer content to simply run him ragged as he did his best to contain the ill she caused. Another fortnight passed and she still avoided him except to wile her way around and worked her way up to timing things just _so_ , so that his miracles would be truly reversed, fully nullifying them in their entirety.

“Sir Phail,” Crowley greeted him, circling his shoulders as she had made a habit of these last few days, from his right to his left, as if he might ever be inclined to hide her behind a shield. Well, perhaps, if there was suitable cause, but Aziraphale was finding himself less and less inclined to do so the more she vexed him like this.

“Lady Morgein.” He replied dryly, his distrust of her was not something he was particularly opaque about, cautioning King Arthur to keep his eyes on her. The King’s affirmative reply was not as assuring as it could have been, with his eyes on her barely-hidden hair.

Crowley offered him her hand and he took it, drawing her roughly to his side and placing her hand in the crook of his elbow. It would have been unbearably rude for him to do otherwise, and he had never loved and hated the social morasses Humans created more than now. His hand remained atop hers, holding her there so she wouldn’t be able to pull free so easily and swan off before he was done speaking, but the words abandoned him at the sight of her smirk and the touch of her free hand over his. As if to say _check and mate_.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale growled lowly, the rumble of his lion’s head in the ether seeping into his voice and he turned all of his eyes onto her, sharp and staring. He watched for every movement of her incorporeal form and every nuance of her human body, standing so still even moss may have grown on him given the chance.

“Aziraphale.” She sneered back, the void-black hood of her occult form flared and she reared back on that other plane, and between two human-like bodies there were nearly sparks of lightning for how charged the air grew, the smell of burning ozone filling the room.

“King Arthur is under my protection, foul fiend. I will not _let_ you corrupt him.” Aziraphale intoned, Heaven in his voice.

“You can have him,” she replied, a hiss threading through her throat and her fangs sharpening even as Aziraphale watched. Crowley didn’t bother to flinch when Aziraphale’s eagle head screeched and snapped at her spiked tail, which had snuck up behind Aziraphale when all his eyes were so trained on the less hidden parts of her.

“Then what is it you’re here for?” He grimaced, not noticing the way servants and other nobility alike fled from their path, even as they couldn’t comprehend why two mildly upset looking individuals were so abhorrent to pass by.

“That’ss not for you to know, now is it, _angel_?” Crowley stood to her full height, both in the mortal plane and flaring her wings in the one above it in challenge. The way she said angel was an insult this time, no longer some secret adoration. “We have no sssuch _Arrangement_.” And with that Aziraphale pulled his hand out from under hers, feeling her magics pull together for a retreat, and he snapped a circle in place beneath the two of them. One meant for binding a demon in place and rendering it harmless.

“ _Crowley!_ ” Aziraphale accused her with nothing more than her name, disengaging from her and stepping out of the circle. He remained unflinching when she screeched, enraged, and pounded fists that quickly turned into scaled claws at the invisible barrier. She opened her mouth again to scream before quickly pulling all her demonic form inside her mortal body. With his eyes on her, Aziraphale could see the seams of her corporation glow an uncomfortable Hellfire orange with the strain.

She tumbled to the ground with a grand performance of grace, seemingly boneless in her fall, and began weeping great, fat tears and her veil became artfully shaken, hair dripping from its previous confines in sultry curls.

“Azira!” The King shouted from down the hallway, but he was too far away to do much, and certainly not God-blessed enough quite yet to stop a smiting.

Aziraphale unsheathed his sword in a smooth gesture and moved with divine poise to take his sword in both hands. Without any pause in his movements, he dropped his body along with the point of his sword to pierce her unguarded back. She ought to know better than to present such an easy target, with her show for the Humans.

She died dramatically, writhing and screaming like a snake, and snarled that the entire court would rue the day they allowed her in to be killed. She scrabbled her clawed fingers up Aziraphale’s chest to sink her nails into the back of his neck and pull him close to whisper in his ear.

“Remember, angel,” she murmured throatily, and Aziraphale could not help but be held entranced at the seduction in her voice, even as he held the sword that ran her through, “This could have been easy.”

And with that she turned her head to kiss his temple, and let her grasp on her corporation wither as she was shunted back to Hell. He was left with an alarmingly, rapidly decaying corpse and a blackened, burning imprint of her lips on his face. And Hell to pay in the form of the ire of the king he was meant to empower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS GUYS!! [You gotta check out what cassie-oh drew for this chapter!!](https://twitter.com/cassie_ohpeia/status/1257722392400576513) It was in the coloring book zine as well, but it was done for this a while back!


	8. 2050BCE City of the Scepter, or Waset, Upper Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Crowley as the evil Egyptian god Apep, directly fighting Aziraphale (who is mistaken as Ra), Crowley is called Crawly (pre-Crucifixion)

Crawly hated Thebes, hated this assignment. There was no way to slack off here, there was no way for him to get away with the _lesser evil_. Not with how he’d been set up here.

Direct and specific orders were rare enough that Crawly knew he’d be watched, or at least it was heavily suggested he would be, so he couldn’t fuck this up. And, well, at least when he was causing this much wanton destruction then it wasn’t the human’s fault.

Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II had only just collected all of Egypt into a single nation and Hell, apparently, didn’t much like that. Or, at least, didn’t like how large this nation was without a little strife. Crawly became fearsome then, against his will. He stayed most days as a giant serpent, black as the night sky reflected on the Nile, dark as delta soil, and red as the blood he spilt in service to his hellish masters.

They called him Apep, and they did all they could to appease him. Set him up in a temple, gave him jewels and fat calves to gorge on, and even sent their most beautiful young men and women. All of whom were slain as mercifully as he could manage.

He would shift from snake to man, or woman, or whatever the new sacrifice to be found most comforting, or most distracting. And he would go up to them, touch them until they were no longer scared, speak to them for days if they required it, until he could slip behind them and pierce their skin with his fangs and poison them so quickly they couldn’t feel it.

And then he would have to throw their bodies down the steps for their families to take back. They likened him to a god, an evil one who was here to torment their kingdom. In a way, they were right, and Crawly had no energy left to do any more than he did. He grew slothful and lethargic, which no amount of sun or food could rid him of, and he slept for weeks at a time. Occasionally even months went by until he was woken, usually by some human testing their luck with killing him. He wished they would, but unfortunately his scales wouldn’t be pierced by anything but a holy weapon, or at least by a weapon of much higher caliber than the world had available to them now.

25 years passed this way until Crawly’s relief came. Aziraphale descended, his wings tanned and burnished gold from the sun so that they looked like a hawk’s from behind him. “Crawly!” Aziraphale scolded loudly as he landed on the steps of the temple.

“Apep these days, angel.” Crawly pulled himself up to his full height, a massive thing made of thick muscle and large fangs at the top of the temple. He surveyed the area before him and saw a few of the humans gathering, and that was fine, he’d just have to keep from crushing them as much as possible. It would be difficult in this sort of form he thought, so Crawly took a moment—even as Aziraphale manifested a holy spear and advanced up the temple steps—and forcibly turned his form back into that of a man.

He was covered, only barely, in a thin shendyt that stopped at his knees, gathered in the front for some modesty with a belt of woven gold, and adorned in some of the jewels and precious metals he hadn’t touched since they were dropped at his feet. A diadem of gold encircled his head with a rearing cobra at the front and hanging jewels that clacked when he moved too quickly, thick bands layered over his arms, and wide cuffs were worn at his ankles.

A scepter with the head of a snake appeared in his hands as well, it was gilt with gold and inlaid with precious gems and as good as any club with the weight of the head. Crawly hefted the scepter up until his hands were near the end and, once Aziraphale came into range, he stepped forward and swung.

A resounding _crack_ of metal and wood meeting rang through the air and Crawly could already hear the whispers and gasps of the humans below as Aziraphale blocked his half-hearted attack.

“Just _what_ are you doing, Crawly?” Aziraphale asked, determined and half-shining with holy, righteous anger. Crawly only grit his teeth and tried his hand at another swing. Parried this time, Aziraphale caught the mouth of the serpent scepter with the spear and wrenched it from Crawly’s hands with a grunt of effort.

Quickly Aziraphale stabbed at Crawly with the spear, which was also faintly glowing with divine power that would surely smite Crawly in a particularly unpleasant way. But a plan was forming even as Crawly dodged to the side towards the scepter. It wasn’t much of a weapon, Crawly didn’t want it to be, he might admit if asked if he weren’t the type to break out in hives for his honesty.

Crawly lunged for the scepter and prepared himself for impact, one knee firmly on the stone ground of the courtyard and his other foot braced firmly to keep his balance low. Aziraphale was a _vision_ above him, the sun behind his head shining through his hair. Crawly ached to reach up and touch it, to see if it was as soft as the clouds he remembered napping on in the firmament before that Whole Thing happened, before time started up.

But he didn’t, he let Aziraphale bear down on him with the length of his spear pressed into the makeshift club Crawly held crossways, their hands shoulder-width apart and pushing back and forth to see who might emerge the victor.

It quickly became a game of strength and Aziraphale would always win those. He was a cherub, even if no longer in title he was a guardian and a protector and a warrior all the same. No matter how little he cared for the fighting. Aziraphale also most certainly had the high ground and gravity on his side, even if Crawly never much cared for listening to gravity in the first place. Crawly leaned in and let his features half-transform into that of a snake.

His canines elongated and grew into fangs that reached past his lips and black scales bloomed along his cheeks and neck. From a gasp in the crowd, Aziraphale was relatively sure he’d sprouted his scales along his back and legs and over his ribs too. He writhed for the show of it and shouted evil-sounding curses he knew wouldn’t land and stick on anyone the way they were worded, and he put too little ire behind it for any to remain on Aziraphale. Cursing an angel, after all, took quite a bit of effort, though his show would likely be applauded for his “attempts at doing so nonetheless.” He hoped.

“Smite me, Aziraphale!” Crawly leaned in and hissed insidiously, teeth clenched and the brightness of Aziraphale’s halo shining through broken glasses looked like tears in his eyes. “Smite me, damn you, it’s now or never!”

Aziraphale drew in a ragged breath, shuddering as he pulled holy power to his corporeal form. “I’m so sorry, my Dearest.” Aziraphale whispered and leaned in to kiss the crown of Crawly’s head where the hanging jewels of his diadem had previously lain.

“You bastard.” Crawly’s laugh was harsh and it took everything Aziraphale had not to flinch from it, a few moments passed as Crawly writhed from the holy power coursing through him, breaking up every atom of his corporeal form bit by painful bit, and dispersing it in heavenly light—the kind that no mortal eyes could bear looking at as atoms split and were thrust apart in a mass of nuclear fission.

Aziraphale leaned on his spear and caught Crawly’s scepter, a hooked thing with ruby eyes in the carved and gilt snake head. Apep indeed.

A few of the humans came to him after and he restored the sight on the man who hadn’t looked away from Crawly’s smiting in time with a sigh, and then fled as swiftly as he could once they started calling him Ra, of all things.


	9. 1916CE Somme, France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: WW1, Battle of the Somme, mentions of trench warfare and no man's land, stomach wound

“I’m so, so sorry, angel.” Crowley bent over Aziraphale, jackboots and wool trousers covered in heavy, cold mud.

“It’s… alright, my dear.” Aziraphale whispered with a shaky smile, blood pooled on his horizon-blue uniform, a sharp contrast to Crowley’s darker clothing.

“No, no ‘s not,” Crowley replied just as softly, voice trembling just as much as his hands did. He removed Aziraphale’s helmet. Crowley hadn’t realized that encouraging two soldiers to take heed of their disgruntlement with the war and their leadership would lead to this, to his angel lying in the mud in Somme, France.

“Why’re you fighting with the French, angel?” Crowley asked, sitting back on his heels and bending over Aziraphale’s face, to try to keep the cold, October rain off him as the grey clouds poured down. “You can barely speak French, why not stand with the British?”

Aziraphale hummed tiredly and the side of his lips quirked. “Told to.” He rasped, and Crowley tore off his sunglasses, throwing them haphazardly to the side, uncaring that they sunk into the mud and were lost. He could always conjure up another pair later, this was more important.

“Yeah? Sounds about right.” Crowley muttered with a frown and looked over to the blood on Aziraphale’s stomach. It was still pooling. He furrowed his brows and let his wings manifest solidly enough to block the rain over them entirely, at least for a little bit.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, scrambling to take a closer look at the puncture wound there, “Fuck, angel! Why didn’t you say something?!”

Aziraphale gave Crowley a small, pitying look that said everything he didn’t have the energy to. Aziraphale couldn’t close the wound, too many miracles recently or unable to concentrate because of the bloodloss or that bloody _idiotic_ policy that had come down after Yeshua preached about self-sacrifice being the greatest of these loves or some other bullshit about not being able to fix death blows taken in the place of someone else.

But whatever it was, Crowley couldn’t fix it, he couldn’t touch the _ethereal_ energies in Aziraphale without great harm to himself. He’d do it anyway if he thought Aziraphale wouldn’t be raging mad at him for it after, to be perfectly honest. Which he wasn’t, he was a demon and demons were allergic to perfection and honesty.

“Angel,” Crowley said, like the breath had been punched out of him. It wasn’t fucking _fair,_ Crowley hated wars. He hated seeing so many people dying left and right, where there was no clear cut winner, where everything was a pyrrhic victory built up on the piles of wasted human life. And, if the fight was big enough, was hard enough, was brutal enough, Aziraphale and Crowley would inevitably be found on opposing sides.

The icy rain ran down Crowley’s spine and slicked off his feathers, slowly seeping through the oils coating them. Eventually, the water would drip through them and he’d truly be sodden, but maybe, maybe Aziraphale would be ok by then.

“Don’t worry, angel, you’re fine, you’re fine. You’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out!” Crowley muttered, a hysterical edge to his voice as he shucked off his wool jacket, paying no mind to how they _should_ catch on his wings but didn’t, they were in a different plane or something, didn’t work that way, whatever. This was more important.

“C’mon, angel, look at me–” Crowley tore open Aziraphale’s jacket and the shirt underneath only to recoil at how Aziraphale gasped in pain, blood and half-formed scabbing pulling at gaping flesh. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” The demon chanted under his breath, leaning in for a closer look.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured weakly, placing a hand on Crowley’s wrist where it hung limply by his side, hand still fisted in torn fabric, every movement looked like a monumental effort and Crowley’s heart dropped deeper and deeper into The Pits.

“ _No_ , angel!” Crowley snarled, “You’re not allowed to leave yet!” He balled up his jacket and pressed it against the perforation in Aziraphale’s gut only to rear back when the angel whined in pain.

“Fuck, right, sorry angel.” Crowley hissed and pulled his bag slung over a shoulder to the front of his body, labeled with a blood-red cross on white canvas. There hadn’t been a vial of morphine sulfate in his field first aid kit until just now but it came with a clean needle so Crowley didn’t bother to think too hard on it and what sort of worry would have manifested it. He wiped off Aziraphale’s bared shoulder with a rain-wet cloth from his pack and pulled the angel onto his knees as best he could. The veins were somewhat easy to see but tricky as they were shallow, but Crowley had always been a steady hand and he’d been in worse situations. Well, maybe not worse than _this_ , but perhaps more under fire, as it were.

With the morphine given as close to the heart as Crowley could manage, he could almost feel it take effect with how Aziraphale shuddered and relaxed. Crowley pet the sodden and muddy curls until he was sure Aziraphale was in the hands of Morpheus—Morpheus and Pain were the only gods Crowley seemed to be able to believe in these days—and he held his hands out in the rain to clean them as best he could.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley spoke in a stream of pleas, uncaring how his voice shook or how he choked on words, as he pulled out needle and thread and snapped a lantern into existence, uncaring if the light drew any attention in this rain in what felt like no man’s land. Not when the ungodly long battle, 100 _bloody_ days of it so far, seemed to last eternities. “You’ll be fine, Aziraphale, you know. You’re the strongest chap I know, stubborn to a fault really. Must be that ox head of yours, might be the eagle to be fair, those are nasty buggers. And I know you’d say it’s just ‘cause I’m a serpent, but really I’ve seen them pick on crows and the like too. And shush, you think too loud, angel, I’m _trying_ to help you here, really you ought to be thank– well, nevermind that.”

The sutures were thick and black but Crowley tried not to think about how they scarred, and how, if he managed this, Aziraphale wouldn’t truly heal from that sort of thing. Or perhaps he would, if only he could get Aziraphale back together enough to pull all his wits about him, enough for a miracle. Just one, that’s all he’s asking for.

“Please, please, just stay here with me, Aziraphale. You’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out, it’s alright, angel! Come on now, buck up, just like you’ve always said. And fu– bloody bless it, angel! God, please.” Crowley paused at the lack of sting at the tip of his tongue, taking God’s name in vain, or perhaps expecting the sting because it wasn’t in vain. “ _God_ , please, please, you’ve got to favor him, let him stay, please. Let me keep him, just once, this one isn’t even _my fault_ , please God, just this once. Not for me, never for me, but please, God, please.”

And his babbling turns to prayers aloud to a God he believes in but doesn’t want to, because that would be a kinder thing as the blood in Aziraphale’s guts thickens and slows until it no longer moves in him at all just as Crowley finishes the last stitch in Aziraphale’s guts.

 _It would be kinder,_ Crowley thought to himself with bloody hands and black wings dripping with rainwater over the Somme, _If She hadn’t existed to us at all._


	10. 1792CE Brittany, France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: drowning, intimacy before death

“And how’d you like the crêpes?” Crowley asked with a hum, eyes closed as she luxuriated in the bath. They were still in France, they’d both lingered a little while here doing their good and bad deeds as needed and went back to that lovely crêperie a few times over the last year. It had been… good. Aziraphale was the first to admit, of the two of them, about their friendship being more than simply convenience.

She had said, the words were seared into her head no matter how drunkenly she had whispered them to a Crowley she had thought asleep, “You’re the North Pole, Crowley, do you know? To my compass, and I think if I hadn’t had you… I would be so much more lost than I am. I dread to think what I might be without having ever met my most ardent, and beloved friend.”

Crowley had popped one eye open and looked up at Aziraphale, her head pillowed in her lap and nearly had wine spilled into her long, dark hair as Aziraphale startled at the sign of her wakefulness.

“Oh,” Aziraphale had whispered, horror in her voice and tears gathering under her lashes until they felt heavy with salt water until Crowley startled her once more. She hadn’t said anything, only cupped a hand to Aziraphale’s face, her eyes free of her spectacles and open wide to Aziraphale’s searching. Crowley’s thumb had stroked along her cheek until she relaxed and her tears never had a moment to fall in the first place, and she knew she was forgiven. For taking so, _so_ long to admit they were friends. To say the words aloud, even if it was only in the privacy of a cottage outside St. Malo’s walls.

Crowley hadn’t said anything back, she didn’t need to, she’d already said it plenty of times before, in the ways that she could. In ways that weren’t so easily traced as words, and perhaps not so concrete but Aziraphale had always known, in a way.

“I liked them plenty, you know that, you devil! You’re the one who brought them home.” Aziraphale chided with a smile, trying her best for a stiff upper lip and not letting the wobble in her throat overtake her voice. There was a pristine white card of stiff, heavy paper with golden calligraphy on the front, sealed with white and gold wax. It burned a hole in the desk it appeared on, or at least Aziraphale wished it had. That it left a permanent mark around it and looked as ominous as it felt.

Crowley had seen it appear and said nothing. She rarely said anything, or at least nothing of importance. Aziraphale didn’t like to talk about feelings, not her own at least, and certainly not the ones about Crowley _with_ Crowley, and she suspected Crowley felt a lot the same about her. So they spent a year talking about everything else, her books and the rose bushes down the road Crowley ‘toughened up’ and how the lemons from the tree made the best shikanji either had drunk outside of that one stand in Punjab they’d both come across one particularly hot summer.

And then Crowley stood, mentioning that she would take a bath, soak a bit, and “I suppose I’ll see you later, angel.” It took the sound of water starting to steam from an application of occult magic to spur her into reading the missive. Within moments she stood, hiking her skirts up with one hand and crossing the cottage in a flash.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered urgently as she burst through the door, a pained grimace on her face, “Crowley they _suspect_.”

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked back, voice meek and entirely unlike her as she curled up in the bath. Her hair was dark from the water and her knees were up by her chest, secured with arms wrapped around them, and she looked like she’d been sitting like that, just waiting for Aziraphale to come tell her what was next. The idea that she might have been content to wait forever for Aziraphale didn’t sit right in her chest, it felt heavy and invasive like the roots of a mint plant, popping up at the most inconvenient times.

“ _Crowley_ ,” She whispered again, unable to raise her voice, unable to say anything else. There was a long moment between them until the silence was broken by Crowley’s bone-deep sigh.

“Yeah, alright, angel. Come on, you promised to wash my hair.” Aziraphale hadn’t, but she knew better than to say it, not when Crowley was giving her an out, not right now.

“Of course, my dear.” Aziraphale murmured quietly, gathering her skirts into her lap as she sat on the stool behind Crowley’s head and tangled her fingers into long hair. Aziraphale reached for the Aleppo soap and lathered it in her hands before gently scrubbing at Crowley’s scalp. Slowly, the demon began to relax and Aziraphale would never admit to taking her time, memorizing the way Crowley felt melting under her hands and how warm the room suddenly became.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley broke the silence, not bothering to open her eyes, “You know, I think I still owe you one from…”

“Ranelagh Gardens. 1749.” Aziraphale’s hands moved to rub at the back of Crowley’s neck and shoulders, even though she hadn’t washed the soap from her hair yet.

“Yeah, that.” Crowley would never admit it, not aloud, but Aziraphale could feel the minute trembling underneath her skin, could feel the reckless rush of blood in Crowley’s neck underneath her fingertips.

 _Luckily,_ Aziraphale thought, _We shake at the same frequency, so she cannot feel the tremor in my hands. She might start fighting, then._ Sometimes, if Crowley thought Aziraphale would hesitate, would pause in any way that would put herself at more of a target, or perhaps simply took too long for the demon to bear, Crowley would start a fight. It was easier, or perhaps not _easier_ so much as it felt less like the cold-blooded murder it was, if there was an opponent instead of simply a victim in her best and dearest friend.

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale sighed, wildly unhappy with all of it. With the year-long jaunt off on their own that felt altogether too quickly ended, with the recall to England as the base of operations for Aziraphale the Principality, with the complete and utter return to reality that Aziraphale suddenly found she despised? The reality that pitted her against Crowley and kept them from just… just this, she supposed. What was one year to an immortal? What truly could it mean, except it felt like everything she was meant to be made for, this last year.

Her thumbs rubbed along the back of Crowley’s neck, massaging from where her spine melded into her back and up to the base of her skull, and she wished her fingers didn’t feel so unforgiving and firm against the pliant muscles beneath Crowley’s skin.

“Angel?” Crowley asked softly, pulling Aziraphale from her thoughts with a small jolt.

“Ah, yes, I’m sorry, my dear. Just… relax. And I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, my dear?” She thanked God silently her voice didn’t waver in her attempts to sound cheery.

“A course, angel.” Aziraphale watched as Crowley’s body forcibly relaxed underneath the water, starting with her legs then traveling up to her hips, and her back slouched against the side of the tub until the full weight of her head was in Aziraphale’s hands. If she let go, Crowley would slip under the water.

Aziraphale breathed in once, long and deep, her nose just barely brushing against the damp skin behind Crowley’s ear and just close enough to tell how hard Crowley was doing her best to remain still and her muscles loose, every breath of hers with a nearly unnoticeable hiss in the back of her throat.

“I wish, very dearly,” Aziraphale whispered so low that no one but Crowley and perhaps God Herself might catch it, “That we could be different. But if this is what we have, then I will resolutely remain here, wherever you might have me. At your side, at your back, I only wish…” Her voice choked up, and her eyes stung with saltwater as she blinked tears away.

“You only wish?” Crowley asked, sounding a bit like she’d been torn open and her throat shredded and raw.

“That this wasn’t necessary.” Aziraphale dug her fingers into Crowley’s neck, her grip tight and unforgiving just underneath the jaw, where one might hold a snake so it couldn't bite. Her fingernails, surely, cut small gouges into soft skin and the steam off the bath wasn’t the only reason her hand suddenly felt so wet.

Aziraphale pushed with all her angelic strength until Crowley’s back hit the bottom of the tub and her own rolled-up sleeves were dipped into the water. It was scalding and blindly Aziraphale thought that, perhaps, this is what hell felt like, the feeling in her chest as she didn’t let any of Crowley’s thrashing disturb her from holding her down.

Eventually, at least, they stopped, and Aziraphale drew Crowley back up above the surface of the water. She pressed a kiss to her cheek, braided her hair in the way she knew Crowley liked, and left the cottage by the seaside to return to London. She’d been gone for too long, apparently.

First order of business would be to throw out all her laurel scents and colognes. For some reason, the smell no longer appealed to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my lord! The amazing musical_wings made [breathtaking artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25362517%20rel=) of this chapter! So soft and sweet and idyllic, but good God the faces... They know.


	11. 1835CE London, England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: death/murder while Crowley is sleeping, crushed to death, does not wake up while dying, just very intimate while murder

Dust motes swirled in Aziraphale's wake as he paced from side to side before the lovely, large windows in Crowley's abode. The sun from the window was a perfect rectangle, the head and the jamb crossed in the middle, splitting it into four parts and the sign of the cross in the shadow, even as vague as it was, made Aziraphale a little more uneasy than he thought an angel should feel.

But then again, he'd been around long before the cross had been taken up as a sign, and remembered the days when it was simply a rather effective killing machine. He paused and sighed and clenched his hands in front of him, focusing his attentions on the way the new leather gloves creaked around his knuckles as they flexed and turned to fists. Crucifixion was a nasty thing, and the crosses everywhere was something he'd long since been desensitized to, but that didn't stop it from catching up with him every so often. 

It had been cruel, Aziraphale had always known, a long and slow death that more often than not took days;he was still waiting for someone to catch the fact that he hastened Yeshua's death. He was meant to protect the boy, up until he was sweating drops of blood from the stress of being sold to die like a sacrificial lamb and knowing he had to let it happen because heaven told him so. It was… one of the times that stuck out in Aziraphale's memory. One of the times all his being railed against his corporeal form and he had to wrestle with himself and wrest control away from the instincts he'd been fashioned with. To protect, to care for, to guide and keep safe.

Aziraphale breathed in deeply, his lungs shuddering behind his ribs and shaking the rest of his body. It was barely enough to keep him together, it felt like. But he had to, even though Crowley was pleasantly asleep, he'd been worried, had checked in on the demon who'd become dear to him so many, many years ago. As much as he knew Crowley liked to sleep, wasting away the century wasn't something he could wholly condone!

But… not like this. 

He might not like it, but he did not condemn it so greatly that he wanted... _this_. 

Aziraphale stopped himself from pacing and drew the curtains. He stepped carefully through Crowley's flat, double checking that the reports he'd filled out for Crowley while he slept were there as well. At least those would go ahead of him, having been stamped and submitted to the postal drop off in front of Hell's front doors. Conveniently, he could drop off both their reports as needed, considering their Head Offices used the same entrance.

Heaven, it seemed, had been keeping a closer eye on him ever since he opened the bookshop some three decades ago; having him as a stationary agent meant that they could keep watch easier, and they apparently thought Aziraphale might grow too comfortable in his duties without the beleaguering nightmare of world travel. Or, at least, that was his assumption. Either way, the forces of Heaven were canny and nearly as all knowing as God at times, and in his last quarterly meeting with his supervisor Gabriel (thank Her that it was only every two-and-a-half decades for that particular misery) there had been some decidedly _pointed_ remarks about how the demonic activity from his antithesis _Crowley_ had neither trended upward nor downward, and that could only mean something on the horizon.

Aziraphale might play at it, but he wasn't slow. He wasn't impaired by his time on Earth with Humans, and he _certainly_ wasn't unfamiliar with the games Gabriel liked to play with those he had dominion over. So he took the hint as he ought, left Heaven and returned to Earth to pace inside Crowley's flat for nearly a week.

The indecision was torment. 

His footsteps were half-muffled by a layer of dust over the austere wood and tiling Aziraphale traversed towards Crowley's familiar signature. The entire flat reeked of demon, and while Aziraphale didn't particularly enjoy the smell of it, it was comforting in ways he couldn't always put into words. If he thought about it, and only while particularly drunk, the smell of Crowley felt like home. Of green wood burning in a hearth and smoking out the entire house, burning the bread until it was charred, and searing the stew until it boiled over and stuck to the iron pot. It smelled like friendly mistakes and genuine laughter while mopping up spilt tea with too few, threadbare towels that weren't much use at all.

Crowley slept. His dark hair was longer than Aziraphale had seen it last, jostled loose from the hold of product decades ago and softened by shifting movement as he slept. Aziraphale advanced with trembling hands.

It seemed like they'd only just come back to London. Crowley followed him here in record time after a discorporation for the opening of his bookshop. By all rights, it ought to be Crowley's turn to come out on top, but the situation was precarious. Couldn't have Heaven know he was subbing in for a demon, couldn't have _Hell_ know an angel was doing the Dark Lord's work on behalf of said demon, and absolutely couldn't have either of them know that the demon in question was sleeping all the while. 

Times were changing, Aziraphale could feel it in the air, like static and ozone; it felt that way before the flood, before the crucifixion of that sweet boy Yeshua, before the papacy. All things that irrevocably changed Humanity, that changed him as well no matter how little he liked to think about such things. Angels, Gabriel always intoned snidely while looking at his corporation, are stalwart defenders, staunch and unchanging, and perhaps he ought to _embody_ that a bit more, hmm?

His fashionable facial hair had been shaved, and seems to have stayed shaved rather than growing out like his hair did, and Aziraphale hated how absolutely charming it struck him as. Aziraphale had always known he was a… poor angel, he liked too many things more than capital-L Loved them, he was too involved in human squabbles and spent too much time on Earth getting to know people great and small as he liked. And he liked Crowley, despite all his attempts to do anything but... the demon was witty and charming and pleasant to look at and all the things he liked most about humans for the most part.

But he wasn't Human, he was a demon and that was their lot in life. Aziraphale sat on the bed beside Crowley, feet still firmly on the floor, and carded his fingers gently through his dark hair. Crowley shifted in his sleep to turn and press his face into Aziraphale's palm, just like he'd always done at the rural cottage in France. Something caught in Aziraphale's throat, like he'd gotten a frog lodged in it, until he sighed it away.

"Oh, _Crowley,_ " He whispered, eyes lingering on the pale scars the demon kept in every re-corporation, the tales of all the things he'd done and the marks of every time Aziraphale had discorporated him. Leaning down, Aziraphale pressed his lips to a long, thin line across Crowley's throat. From a blade in Rome before it'd been called Rome.

He tangled their fingers together and shuddered as he breathed in and pressed a kiss to the pads of Crowley's fingers, perpetually shiny like he'd been burnt. Aziraphale toed off his shoes and banished his coat across the room to hang up on the edge of the door, miraculously clean of dirt and dust, and turned to lay down beside Crowley. The demon stirred only enough to turn towards the new source of warmth and softness, just as he'd done plenty of times before in their countryside sojourn, and Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley's shoulders.

It felt worst like this, when Crowley wasn't awake and couldn't fight fairly, to discorporate him and let him wake up in Hell, quite literally. But needs must, and Aziraphale would do _anything_ , and bear any discomfort, to save them both with as wide a smile on his face as he must.

Human bodies, human-shaped bodies, were so fragile. They could be killed in so many ways. Their own bodies on occasion attacked themselves and ended their life that way. So really, it was a matter of a thought to push Crowley down into a deeper sleep with a gentle kiss to his eyebrow, a knick in it from some knife trick Crowley had attempted to show him as he learned it, scarred over smooth. And then he crushed his arms around Crowley's ribs until he felt them crack beneath his strength and the ragged, wheezing pants of Crowley's breathing lingered in the crook of his neck. 

And then, after some long minutes, Crowley's body fell slacker than sleep and sauntered down into death. It was a peaceful end, more or less. Or rather, he hadn't felt how brutal and intimate it was, so it was nearly the same thing, surely.

Aziraphale sighed once more as he stood and pulled on his shoes, then his coat, and left Crowley's flat, wasting a miracle to clean the entire thing. Heaven always seemed to hate when new technologies were put out unless it directly assisted them. The Gutenburg press was one thing, turned to producing copies of bibles, but trains in Belgium? Well, that was another thing entirely and _surely_ the work of the devil... 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me in a couple of places!
> 
> Twitter: <https://twitter.com/Great_Ass_aFire>  
> Tumblr: <https://d20owlbear.tumblr.com/>
> 
> All my graphics/photomanips are there plus you can find updates on anything if you send me an ask or message! I also take graphic/banner/emoji requests and writing prompts/requests.
> 
> AND ALSO! If you have any suggestions of time periods, prompts, or anything else for this series I'd _love_ to hear them either in comments or directly as asks on Tumblr! The original (un-beta'd) versions of this series is posted first on Tumblr as well, all tagged as "Discorporation Series"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [“...and still I know not why.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25362517) by [musical_wings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musical_wings/pseuds/musical_wings)




End file.
